Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of April 7–13, 2017

By Dan Rattiner

4 minute 04/10/2017

Jerry Seinfeld rode the Hamptons Subway this week, Photo: Jemal Countess, littleny/Getty Images Entertainment, iStock/Thinkstock

Week of April 7–13, 2017
Riders this past week: 26,422
Rider miles this past week: 112,001

DOWN IN THE TUBE
Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley and East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell were seen on the Hamptons Subway heading from Southampton toward Bridgehampton last Friday afternoon talking about Paris and Rome. Both are retiring this November. Local taxi driver Amos McCann and Jerry Seinfeld, drinking coffee out of to-go containers, were removed from the train by subway personnel at the Sagaponack station. Beverages are not permitted on the trains unless trains are stopped during a delay.

DRUMMER
People on the Southampton platform noticed a high school drummer in full blue-and-white uniform marching in place and banging away on his big bass drum all afternoon and evening last Saturday. Earlier in the day, the entire Westhampton Beach Hurricanes marching band played its way up the street from the Southampton High School gym after a buzzer-beating final shot propelled the Hurricanes into the state basketball finals. They came down the subway steps playing “The Thunderer,” waited for a westbound subway train for a victorious ride home and all piled into one car. But the bass drummer, at the back, encountered the sliding doors as he pushed in with his big drum, finally pulling it back out just before the drum would have been crushed. The train pulled out, but the drummer remained standing on the edge of the platform, banging the drum and watching helplessly as the music faded away down the tunnel. At 9 p.m., security frog-marched the drummer up the escalator. He was last seen on the sidewalk heading west, still thumping away.

DELAYS
Some trains could not get into service today, Tuesday, the last day before we go to press because there were not enough personnel on the job to run them. A good many employees called in sick. As a result, trains are now running at 11-minute intervals instead of the usual 7. A new employee health plan went into effect last week, decreed by Commissioner Aspinall. A staunch Republican, he has installed the Trump Health Plan that failed to get through Congress two weeks ago as a gesture to his golfing friend Mr. Trump, but the plan takes so much more money out of weekly paychecks that only half of the subway employees took it. The remainder have come down with cholera, pneumonia, chicken pox, yellow fever and growling stomach syndrome. An enraged Commissioner Aspinall sent his personal physician out to knock on the front doors of the “sick” employees, but Dr. Applecore came back reporting that all were truly ill with what they said they had.

SUBWAY LIGHTS FLICKER
Lights at the Bridgehampton Station flickered on and off while rolling thunder and shafts of lightning bolts came from the ceiling on Monday between noon and 1 p.m. scaring the daylights out of customers. It was all for a new movie being filmed called Apocalypse 9. The film company, Solar System Pictures, had reserved the platform for that hour, but apparently subway authorities failed to put up a sandwich board sign at the top of the escalators informing the public the platform was closed for that time.

NEW PLATFORM PERFORMER RULES
The subway commission that listens and watches performers, then decides who gets to play on the platforms, was disbanded last Friday as a result of cultural subway cutbacks. So everybody just play.